From: drew@cs.colorado.edu (Drew Eckhardt) Subject: Re: Free BSD release: future of Minix/Linux? Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1992 08:18:00 GMT
In article <1992Mar18.030152.14554@epas.toronto.edu> meggin@epas.utoronto.ca (David Megginson) writes:
>
>Now that a fully bootable, free BSD Unix for '386 and '486 boxes is
>available from agate.berkeley.edu (pub/386BSD), how will Minix and
It boots on many machines. It doesn't boot on a lot. With Linux,
you still have the option of running DOS on only one hard disk,
with BSD you do a mklabel etc, and that IS your hard disk. DOS and
BSD will not coexist. BSD has neither virtual consoles nor X,
so you want something there's no way to hangup, and you need a
spare dumb terminal. No ptrace, no shared libraries, heavy resource
usage. BSD 386 is where linux was last year in terms of stability.
BSD has name recognition, FFS, networking, and tape support. It will
take more to rectify the 386 BSD problems, and add Linux standards like
shared libraries, virtual consoles, etc. than it will to add the
missing features to Linux.
I do however see a cross pollination of code between BSD and Linux,
with people from both groups borrowing code from eachother.
>Linux fare? I am stuck with Minix, because I use a 68000-based
>machine, but I wonder whether many Intel users will stay with Minix or
>Linux?
Minix : Linux and BSD will definately hit Minix's non-educational
users. As far as educational users, the operating systems professor
here at CU was practically salavating over BSD 386, and having a
"real operating system" that he can teach with.
I plan on staying with Linux. At this point, BSD 386 just has a
long way to go.